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Morning of January 2, 1969. Thursday.



This is a very vivid dream, though at one point it seems I am watching myself from a few paces south around the middle of the Cubitis hallway while disembodied; the other me looking in awe at the coat that is suspended in air (in the same area and position as if it were otherwise hung by a hanger).

I am looking at a coat in the hall closet of my Cubitis home. It is my winter coat, but it is eerily floating in the air with no hanger (though it does not seem to be worn or held up by an invisible entity at any point - the “magic” is in the coat itself). There are only a few other clothes on each side of it (but pushed to the side against the closet walls). My father is making references to this in a sort of narrative manner (seemingly only vaguely wary of the coat’s dimly glowing essence of a very pale green) as if it is important for me to learn about (he did used to tell me ghost stories in real life but I am not sure if this coat is purely “haunted” or is to be useful with its special powers). It seems to be in the middle of the night or very early morning an hour or two before sunrise. My father and I are the only two characters in this dream. I do not sense or perceive any other being.

The above childhood dream, upon present reflection for some reason, now brings back a very vivid memory of going to get my coat in the school closet in real life (kindergarten) on the last day of school, and there was one other winter coat that a chubby male student (Robert, I think) had left behind, so I informed the female teacher (“Yandell” or something like that - but I mentally changed her name to “Yardstick” in my dreams). I remember the eerie sense of “finality” and the false sense as if the coat was “hovering” there “without the boy in it”. Both the childhood real-life event and this later very vivid dream of my later childhood seemed to hold a similar mood, and the real-life memory may have been the “trigger” (though there are likely other factors). For some reason, my memories of each last day of school (regardless of the grade) seem to be much more vivid and clearer than the memories of other days, even if nothing significant happened.

See also: “Empty Boots”

Morning of December 31, 1978. Wednesday.



This dream from age eighteen (after moving back to Wisconsin during the last days of June 1978) is very similar in some ways to an early childhood dream of the same date (so therefore seems like some sort of “anniversary” layer - Return of the “cat girl”), though the implied submarine is not actually part of any real building’s lower level that I know of (or reminiscent of any). There have not been any other dreams of this particular mood and nature (that is, with a basement or lower level of a building as a faux submarine) that I know of other than this and the 1966 one.

In my dream, I am supposedly in a feasible “submarine” and carry the idea that I may be being filmed as part of some sort of big-budget movie. This makes me feel as if my privacy is being violated even though I do not fully feel at home in this setting or even know much about it (or any back story). That is mostly because I want to find a girl to interact with although I seem to be the only one “on board the submarine”. This faux submarine, even though I seem to see it from the outside at times (possibly via some sort of view screen or short-term in-dream disembodiment) and even stationary in the waters of the ocean (though seemingly not that far below the surface), I am also aware of its “real” location. Its “real” location is on the east side of Highway Seventeen, oriented north to south, underground by about ten feet (so that apparently a flight of steps leads up and out on at least the two ends), and on the perimeter of our neighbor Harold’s orange grove (though the orange grove does not exist any more and thus is not in the image with this entry). The inside of the “submarine” is more like a large but narrow underground warehouse or appliance storage area made up of two separate halls and at least two sections, somewhat suggestive of the letter “H”, each lined with a number of ovens and probably washing machines, refrigerators, and other larger furnishings and such including large antique wooden tables and not-so-fancy table lamps.

Even though I seem to be a part of this scene as in a movie, nothing happens at all except for me wandering about and looking for a girl to be with - most seemingly, the “mystery girl” (wife-to-be character). Other than that, I have no strong focus or awareness of the real world - only where I am in placement and orientation of the fictional setting. This could be an extreme variation of my much older school bus dreams, when I used to “see” my bus as a “submarine”. The underground location is the general area near where the bus stopped regularly during one semester. It does not dawn on me at any point that we do not live right near the ocean, and I do not come to recognize that a submarine cannot travel through solid ground, especially while remaining motionless (such is the “logic” of dreams) - the same failed comprehension from age six.

Relative to the unusual fictional setting, see also the following dreams:

Hall Kitchens?

Short dream of a house of mystery

Morning of December 9, 1978. Saturday.



This was a strange dream that I was not really a direct part of, though I do see everything from a seemingly local three-dimensional perspective (but as if I am invisible to all the characters of my dream and there is never any perceived threat to me).

There is a woman living on an island. I believe her name is Diane or Diana. Over time, she somehow lures various men to her island, in some cases taking them to her home from social venues. Each man is then turned into a different farm animal and kept locked up in a large barn some distance from her house.

One night, about six or seven animals, including a horse, a donkey, a goat, and a chicken - and I think maybe a duck and a cat, plan to escape together. However, I am not sure if they will be turned back into their original form or if the spell will wear off once they leave the island, though they do plan on confronting her, I think. Also, all of the creatures seem to have an unusual sort of shaggy or stringy hair (even the chicken) with a sort of light brownish orange or darker golden tint. Each one of them has a certain task. It is the donkey’s job to kick the barn door out as I watch the scene late at night. The rooster is apparently supposed to distract the woman while another possibly gets keys to her boat (and it seems their plan is to trap her in a room, though I do not really see the story play out). I am not sure what happens next but it seems like some sort of actual well-known story or fable or even an older movie. I do not hear them talk at any point - their apparent conversations and planning seems to work on another level, perhaps telepathy or some sort of universal “animal language”, as I do hear combinations of some odd and loud farm animal sounds a couple times.

At the point where they are escaping from the barn, it seems to be a bilocated setting where they are in the “junk room” (my sister’s name for it) of the Loomis Street house, with the barn door simultaneously leading to the Loomis Street kitchen (rather than outside). This odd unresolved sense of bilocation has occurred in many of my dreams throughout my life.

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Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.



This (in quotes) is the original title and has remained so. I had entitled this as such due to there already being a story I was familiar with called “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (However, the Wikipedia entry is entitled “The Ant and the Grasshopper” - a variation I had never heard of before). This dream was one of many at a very early age that was very vivid and unforgettable in scenery and “momentum”. I am not even “in” this one. It is more like I am floating and viewing things in another world.

In my dream, there is a young female ant named Susanna (a variation of my wife Zsuzsanna’s name interestingly enough but pronounced without the “zhu” and “zha” sound although I did originally call her Susanna at times), possibly influenced by the Stephen Foster song “Oh! Susanna“. In that song, there is the line “The sun so hot I froze to death” and the grasshopper in the original story will supposedly starve in the winter or possibly freeze to death.

I have accepted the precognitive implications for four reasons; the bride’s name being Susanna, my wife being petite (thus much smaller than I), and the nature of our mixed marriage. She also has more than three younger brothers. Also, the building in this dream was similar to the one I first stayed at with my wife - even called Clarence (my middle name) House. There is also the association with “clodhopper” and “grasshopper” as detailed below. Though I was not certain of the grasshopper’s name, there was a vague association with Marco Polo.

This was a long dream, but I only summarized the main scenes originally. It involves the female ant being “courted” romantically and secretly in a “jungle” - or rather, an area with more grass and stones and such, a fair distance from her home. The female ant’s younger brothers were like composites of three Hot Stuffs and Huey, Dewey, and Louie - but with ant-like features. The scenes were not that cartoon-like at times, but rather like an animated painting. The ants seem to live in a scaled-down condominium rather than an anthill though, so it is kind of funny. There was also some sort of implied practical joke routine related to “condominium pandemonium”. I was not even quite sure what the words meant. I do not think I heard this exact term in real life, or maybe it had been a newspaper headline or some such.

Her rather mean-looking brothers do not want her involved with the grasshopper or any chance for a “mixed marriage” (which is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose, as I have been technically in a mixed marriage all these years - even though one man, a Jehovah’s Witness, thought we were brother and sister).

The main, most vivid scene has an interesting meeting between the female ant and the male grasshopper (and note the play on my first name of Claude - I was actually called “Clodhopper” in real life for a short time by at least two classmates as well as “Kadiddlehopper” - from Red Skelton’s fictional comedic character Clem Kadiddlehopper).

I can sense or hear romantic music playing. The grasshopper offers his love a rose. She accepts it but says “Thank you, but I like dandelions much better” in the voice of a (unknown) human female. There is not much drama after this. I am not certain what happens, but I do know the three brothers will be bothersome to both their ant sister and their grasshopper brother-in-law.

The real-life joke has a couple variations, but only one relevant to the reversal of the romantic scene from my dream. A teacher asks a child what her favorite flower is and she says “dandelion” (or “chrysanthemum”). The teacher asks “Can you spell that?” and the child says, “Actually, I like roses much better”.

Night of November 25, 1978. Saturday.



I am back in the living room in Cubitis, seemingly very late at night, at a table near the northeast corner near where the chimney my father had built was in real life. There is an older cigar box with about twenty or more stamps at the bottom, near one corner. The cover of the cigar box actually looks more like the back of an American one dollar bill, with the eye above the pyramid part, except that it has a sort of sepia and orange tint instead of being greenish.

Marilyn and Carol (two of my half-sisters on my mother’s side) are in the room. There seems to be an unusual energy, almost like a “dark force” or suggested evil presence. The stamps rise in the air and hover above the bottom of the cigar box and there is a slightly uncomfortable sense of our home now being haunted (although I was no longer living there in real life).

Looking at this dream record now on Monday, 18 January 2016, it seems very straightforward and easy to interpret. A box or container in a dream symbolically represents the non-lucid dream self’s attempt to quantize the dream (or dream state) - in other words, to “contain” and define the level of awareness or “world” the dream self finds itself in. In this case the box contains haunted stamps as stamps represent communications “between two selves” (yet within the same container). Each stamp is a (incomplete) two-dimensional form of conscious thought potential (or the essence of the waking self as different from both the fully conscious self and the dream self incarnation). This - the flat stamps and static imagery of each stamp - is with regard to the “other-dimensional” nature of dreams. Many of the stamps feature human head profiles, giving more evidence to this concept. The eye above the pyramid symbol represents the full conscious self (or perhaps even the Source). In fact, most “haunting” dreams seem to be subtle links between the conscious self and the dream self while in the dream state. This is a little similar to my lifelong recurring dream scenario (since around age twelve) of being worried about someone finding a human skull hidden in a box of books under my bed or buried.

Morning of November 17, 1968. Sunday.



In my dream, I am mostly wandering around in a composite location that combines features of West Elementary school in Florida and the Rose Street apartments in Wisconsin.

My school’s hallways have areas that are much like the doorways with the transoms from Rose Street (which did have wooden doors into the next room). These “doorways” are oriented mostly east and west and only go from the same general area of the hall into the next area of the hall but there are no actual doors - just the transom area and the implied “doorway” a short distance out from each implied division of the hallway. There is a slowly dawning realization that hidden treasures are on the ledge of each transom, mostly out of sight when viewed while walking (though realistically, some would be visible when farther away). These treasures include small jewelry boxes full of valuable gems and such, smaller books which include older science-fiction digest magazines from the 1950s and possibly even the newest comic books, as well as American and Canadian coins.

Later, the idea and realization changes, even though I had apparently kept some of these treasures (and had hidden them from others). The items which I had not gotten to yet somehow turn out later to be cleaning items that the janitor had put there, such as a bottle of window cleaner and just a cleaning cloth or rag and such. There is also a distorted scene where I actually seem to be back in sister Marilyn’s apartment on Rose Street, yet also a very large “closet” or school maintenance room at the same time. I am not sure if this is some sort of temporary series of events regarding the cleaning supplies, or if the transom “treasures” themselves were only temporary. This is similar in mood to other dreams of finding treasures in square column-like areas under floor tiles in my Cubitis home, finding secret areas under roof shingles, and finding buttons or small levers that open previously hidden doors into secret rooms.

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The composite settings specific to my Rose Street apartment (as well as my sister’s) and West Elementary was mostly limited to dreams from around 1967 to 1968 when I guess I was still adjusting to the move from Wisconsin to Florida.)

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Morning of November 15, 1968. Friday.



The location seems to be a very dense cypress swamp in Florida. The cypress trees are seemingly gigantic; as big as skyscrapers (though there is no hint of any people or man-made features in the region). It is beautiful. It is also eerie but without any sense of a threat. Although it is of a full view and three-dimensional, I do not seem fully in my dream body (though I am not certain if I am implied to be incorporeal).

I watch what seems to be an enormous eagle, mostly in silhouette, flying from right to left. It is the most vivid when I view it through a wide clearing between two dense areas of impossibly tall cypress trees. It does not seem to be carrying any prey. Its wings are moving but almost as if in slow motion. I feel as if it is a roc (even though a roc is mythological). There is a sense of peace, love, and timelessness. The imagery is mostly in shades of gray (which is very rare in my dreams). The emotional state is also unusual, as other dreams I had during this time included the threat of buzzards, yet this bird seems much bigger, possibly as big as a jumbo jet.

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This dream was my last dream of the morning and is a unique and very enjoyable return flight waking transition.

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My dream seems to have three influences:

• The swampy Fort Ogden area in Florida where I lived when I was very young
• The Pogo Possum comic strip
• A deck of educational cards that, when flicked through, display an animation of wild animal silhouettes with a bird silhouette flying above them

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In my earliest dream journal entry on notebook paper (at age seven) I had referred to this bird as an “elephant bird” (though I also referred to it as a “roc”), but I later learned that the extinct elephant bird was flightless (and of Madagascar) and certainly not like the bird in this dream.

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This entry was last checked and clarified on Saturday, 31 December 2016. A new photographic image (based on an original sketch) has been added.

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Morning of November 11, 1968. Monday.



This became recurring for some time. I am in class and there is talk of an approaching threat. It turns out to be a large dimetrodon (a prehistoric fin-backed reptile-like creature). This was recurring over several weeks. In some scenarios, I saved a female classmate, Linda, sometimes from a falling wall. In one later version of the dream, the single fin splits into two “wings” and I get the impression that it will start to fly, perhaps taking Linda or another classmate (or even a teacher) with it. I found this to be somewhat “too fanciful” an idea even as a child, which I now look back on and reflect upon with amusement.

Night of November 7, 1968. Thursday.



Another dream I had in early childhood is one about the “prehistoric elephant”. It is possible that I originally got the idea from something I had read in a newspaper (of a larger city) or heard somewhere (although, upon newer research, it is probably more likely another case of postcognition or some sort of remote viewing - as I did not really have access to such things at that time), but it still was somewhat precognitive in that I got a book later on relating to part of the theme: “Lassie: Adventures in Alaska” by George S. Elrick (Link here).

My dream featured a shaking side-to-side scene (implied “earthquake”, but extremely common in my childhood perception, from day to day, as well as with the side-to-side “earthquakes” of hypnagogic vision, which I always found interesting, almost comforting). A large, tall, broken-off iceberg floats to a New York harbor near Manhattan (I see the Statue of Liberty in one scene), somehow from Alaska (which would be impossible in real life of course, as they are on opposite sides of the continent - but since when are dreams always geographically realistic?). The iceberg slowly melts…and a living mammoth emerges and goes around New York, knocking into buildings and alarming people (this was also before I was scared, the second time at least, by a trained elephant at a store’s parking lot in real life). I go higher in one skyscraper and look down. Far below, I see the mammoth charging at the building I am in and there are mild vibrations. Nothing that frightening unfolds; it is almost like a sort of movie or already-completed documentary I am seemingly viewing at times in a sort of “second-hand” way.

Curiously, of all the Big Little Books that were published, a different copy of this is now in our present home (an interesting coincidence) - the only Big Little Book we had found anywhere at that time. When I was little, this title was one of a very large number given to me for Christmas by an older sister who worked at a store and got them cheaper (in fact, almost every Big Little Book that was published at that time - it came in a very large package).

By pure chance, years later, my older sister’s third husband’s name happened to be Corey (the same as in this book).

Morning of November 2, 1978. Thursday.



For some reason, cicadas often take on a nightmarish essence for me, especially in dreams. In this particular dream my family is living back in Cubitis except it seems that my brother Earl is either living with us or visiting for a time.

The cicadas in my dream are apparently dangerous and possibly venomous. A few get into the house and I try to go to different rooms to avoid them but one always appears, usually on the ceiling (sometimes higher on the wall), though there is a fictional feature of wooden beams going across the living room just under the ceiling, oriented north to south. The cicadas, which are bigger than in reality, sometimes move behind a beam and out of sight as possibly in an attempt to “ambush” someone. There are times when I am concerned that someone has left the hallway door open (which was rarely used for a time in real life) but since several are already in the house, my focus seems misdirected.

I am not actually hurt at any time, but there is a very strong sense of fear. It is curious that I do not become lucid at any point. It is not really like an infestation as there are probably only about six or seven in the house at any particular time.

Night of October 30, 1968. Wednesday.



I am in the far back of a jeep (possibly being driven by the actor Marshall Thompson), right near the edge of the back (but usually not so close as to worry about falling out though I am somewhat wary of this possibility in one version of my dream), and Erin Moran in her Jenny persona from “Daktari” is also seemingly with me at times, and there are usually a few more people. However, she sometimes seems more like a composite of Brenda W and the “mystery girl” (confirmed wife-to-be) at times. When looking to the back, she is mostly always on my left. We are riding over a mostly featureless area (like an open plain), possibly in Africa, but I also sometimes get the impression that I am active in my school’s supposed field trip and a rhino possibly escaped from somewhere - though this focus seems to make my dream a bit ambiguous and undefined in location. There are different versions of this dream, as it was recurring over a time period of about two weeks or so.

Mostly, the jeep narrowly avoids being hit in the back by the charging rhinoceros, though it does get bumped in the back in minor inconsequential incidents in some versions. I am not directly threatened at any point but very concerned at times. It seems the rhino always manages to at least catch up to the jeep but not match its speed for very long. Sometimes it seems that somehow only the back of the jeep exists along with the floating “legless” (but undulating) rhino body in an otherwise completely featureless landscape with a lot of mist all around.

It is possible that I saw this rhino-charging scene on television (or at least something similar) prior to my dream, but it is not certain, as I did not record any direct associations as such and do not presently recall the particular scene.

Morning of October 29, 1978. Sunday.



I am seemingly in outer space as if I live on an asteroid yet it also seems somewhat movie-like in an impersonal sense. I note that there is at least one very large green octopus-like creature living on the biggest asteroid (and there are possibly many more). I am uncertain of how much of a threat this creature is. I try to recall how long I had been living on the asteroid. I know there may be other people living here but am not sure how many. I get the impression that the octopus is jellylike. It lives in a sponge-like cluster of caves - each with several entrances. I feel slightly ungrounded with only a vague sense of weightlessness.

Some of this seems to have been partly influenced by an issue of “Casper Space Ship” from 1972.

As a dream setting, living or being on an asteroid or space station has been fairly uncommon throughout my life. Two things come to mind relative to interpretation, especially relative to timing. I believe on one level that this dream may represent my perspective of moving from my childhood home from Florida to Wisconsin, where I still felt a bit “ungrounded” at this time and also was not yet living on my own. It seems almost “normal” (in the dream universe that is) that an octopus, which I have finally resolved to represent the human neuron in many cases, is on an asteroid in outer space, which adds up to conscious focus on the outer limits of conscious awareness. In fact, an asteroid (relative to how one appears in this dream) visually represents the human brain (as in the same manner as my dream “The Sacred Rock of Thought” where the sponge-like boulder represented my full brain-shaped conscious essence granting wishes in the dream). As such, each asteroid is likely meant as another consciousness (separate from my own) - other dreamers in orbit of Earth, the Blue Pearl, the Source. This even correlates with my “Meteor Shower” dream (1971) where each equidistant (like the arrangement of desks in a classroom) glowing meteorite on the ground represented the brain or essence of a classmate - a fairly obvious “stand-in” symbol which visually replaces what you would otherwise see in real life in a particular location at a particular time.

Night of October 24, 1968. Thursday.



Newly researched and enhanced entry updated on August 31, 2014. Sunday.

This was one of my favorite childhood dreams, and I became fully lucid by the end of my dream. I was firstly in the living room of my Cubitis home very late at night, probably around midnight. There was a very unusual storm occurring with a lot of thunder and lightning. Over time, I decided to go into my own room, but only opened the door enough to see a very small ghost gliding across the floor. As one of my original titles for this was “The Pillowcase Ghost”, you can imagine what it looked like. There were hardly any features other than the white “pillowcase” with vertically oval eyes and a mouth. He had no legs and only a suggestion of hands to drag his chain. He had a very young voice, like a young boy, as he was “booooooing” (more like moaning and dragging out the word “boo” for some time), and in fact, I could actually see the letters moving in the air above his head in a long, wavy sequence. I was not scared at all. I found it rather fascinating and bordering on pure entertainment. He was dragging a small chain, which looked a little like an animated charcoal drawing. The lightning I watch for a time through mostly the east windows of my bedroom also seems somewhat animated (in an implied letter “Z” sort of way), and is fairly thick and yellowish. I watch the little ghost for a fairly long time. However, he eventually notices me and seems to vanish, as if he had been only practicing his ghostliness and did not want anyone to see what he was doing.

I look around for him and he seems to be under the couch watching me. I imagine that we are playing some sort of game, but I wonder what I should do. For a short time, I am wondering if he actually took the pillowcase from one of my pillows and was now wearing it.

I go into the entrance to the kitchenette and crouch down near a chair (one from real life, with metal legs, in the same position as from last seen in reality). Eventually, the small ghost is in the living room, moving around and gliding very slowly across the floor, almost reminding me of a snail. He does not seem to be aware of me at that point. All in all, my dream is extremely vivid, yet with a cartoon-like atmosphere (but still with full life-like depth perception).

I find myself holding a “Spooky (the Tuff Little Ghost)” comic book (the one in the image, issue number eleven with a cover date of July 1957). I jump out from behind the chair (although technically I was not hidden, as the chair’s legs vertically blocked only a small part of me), and I let out a very loud, staccato “Boo!” At the same time, Spooky flies out of the comic book, growing bigger in flight, until he is my size, as I am holding it open, raising his arms and also shouting “Boo!”

The other poor little ghost’s eyes widen as he cringes dramatically (and diagonally in the opposite direction) in seeming terror and he slides swiftly across the floor backwards, to the other side of the room (he cannot seem to fly at all). He no longer appears in my dream, and Spooky is also gone from the scene (having returned to the comic book, I assume). Eventually, I wake up, and have a false awakening of retrieving my pillow case from under the couch.

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A short time after this, my mother (without knowing about my dream) gave me a glow-in-the-dark plastic ghost figure similar to the one in my dream but wearing a clock necklace (most dreams have at least one precognitive layer or association, but not always as obvious).

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The main influence was “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, which aired earlier that evening. The Spooky comic book cover (that was apparently printed eleven years earlier as well as being issue number eleven) set the climax and resolution into play with a clever scenario, especially of a ghost coming out of the cover of a comic - that comic book cover in reality also showing the ghost coming out of the cover of a book! (and it was from behind a kitchen chair rather than an arm chair which would have hidden me fully - this seems one of several important facets of my dream). The “ghost” was possibly a representation of a challenge in easily “defeating” the Charlie Brown mentality - almost in the manner of “tough real ghost” vs. “weak and fake ghost Charlie Brown”. This seems important because in my dream, it was almost as if I was in full control of the Spooky presence regardless of how short the event. The layers of this dream still seem quite intriguing even as an adult. The later versions of this dream did not have as much impact as the first semi-lucid version.

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This dream had one of the most intriguing and marvelous dream signs I have ever seen. A glowing white “pillowcase ghost” (both a moon symbol and a very obvious dream sign - what could be more obvious a dream sign than a pillow?) serves as the induction and soon becomes the main feature of my dream. Even though Spooky is also technically a moon symbol (“downgraded” consciousness within the nighttime dream state) as are most ghosts, he wears a derby and is thus a “covered moon” in this case, and emerges from the comic book to “send my dream’s moon away” as the waking precursor.

Morning of October 15, 1978. Sunday.



My dream starts out very nicely. I am standing on the deck of a new small yacht in the early evening with the cheerful “mystery girl” (lifelong precognitive wife archetype). It is semi-dark and we are not that far from shore. We seem to be drinking cocktails. I begin to realize it is a dream and it becomes more and more vivid. We seem to be the only people around. I start thinking about how this would be a fine and private place for romance

Over time, however, as we begin to make love, the boat somehow gets smaller and smaller (the girl eventually vanishes somehow), the scenario quite contrary to my wishes, until it is just a board floating on the water, more like a half-sunken canoe, I suppose. I start focusing and chanting “perfecto, perfecto” and the board moves faster through the water (as if it had a motor attached in back) as I remain on my stomach (hands and arms sometimes splashing in the water) hoping everything will work out in an attempt to reach the opposite shore and meanwhile “restore” the seeming intent of how my dream started, but not much else happens as I end up feeling tired and frustrated. For some reason, I feel embarrassment even though no one is around to see my failure at that point - and I also still fully know I am dreaming as I eventually wake. I keep trying, but it remains a board in the water and almost stops now and then, annoying me even more with a slight wariness it could sink. At one point, I get the impression that the Jolly Green Giant is standing on the shore opposite to where I am headed. He does not seem to be threatening in any way, though he is probably amused at my endeavors, I think and he may actually rescue me if need be (though this does not occur).

There was another (semi-lucid) part prior to all this, but no longer clear. It involved exploring a large college-like building and trying to go out from the right exit. One part is an area to go down steps and be below ground level, but then right back up again to the outside door on the other side of the mostly featureless “hall”. It may be a distortion of one of the schools I went to, possibly in La Crosse (though it was also precognitive to the entrance at Northern Engraving where I worked much later without having been there before). There seems to be several “resets” or repeats.

Morning of October 14, 1968. Monday.



A young boy (who is primarily seen in-dream as Clint Howard as he appears on the television series “Gentle Ben”) is hiding from his family and from teachers, and people are continuously looking for him, but no one ever finds him. He has not done anything wrong; he just wants to live his own way and apparently does not like going to public school. He had been living in a special underwater bunker that one can only get to by being ‘swallowed’ by a mechanical hippopotamus head in a lake. I study the blueprints for his setup at one point as it seems that he somehow built it on his own. I clearly see the head from the side and how a person goes downward through a somewhat diagonal tunnel (past a chimney-like vertical area) into the larger bunker.

This is the original childhood dream journal title. I had also drawn images on notebook paper that came in various colors, mostly noticing the greater distance between the mechanical hippopotamus mouth entrance and how the various parts worked, including something related to rocks rolling into position - the hippopotamus head and front part of the body also working somewhat like a public mailbox concept. What is quite interesting is that part of my dream caused me to think of a game very much like “Hungry Hungry Hippos” which supposedly did not exist physically until 1978, about ten years after this dream (although the hippopotamus head and front part of the body are fairly “realistic” in contrast to the game). However, an online source states that the idea for the game was published in 1967, though I do not know if I had access to that information at the time.

What I can add here is that the boy at times also seemed to be a composite character, a combination of myself (yet not really “me” as I mostly saw the scenario as if disembodied) and about seventy-five percent Clint Howard as he appeared at the time. A “Gentle Ben” episode that had aired on television the night before was called “The Wall That Mark and Tom Built”, with the description “Mark has a falling out with his father; Mark takes a job as the guide for a fisherman”. The episode of “Lassie” on that same night was part one of “The Holocaust”, which was summarized as “A fire rages on a Western mountain range and, despite the efforts of helicopter crews, firefighters, and Lassie, Ranger Corey Stuart is trapped in the inferno. When a rescue team finally reaches Corey, he is seriously injured.” Looking at my dream, there were related concepts - the boy lived much on fish as well as there being the idea of being safe from grass fires and arsonists.

Regarding real-life associations, I never had a “falling out” with my father, but it is possible that I felt uncomfortable with certain events at school. In real life, an older classmate asked me if I was related to Clint Howard. This was rather ridiculous in my opinion as we were not even of the same racial background. The only similarity - and it seems to relate to the eyes - is possibly the somewhat Mongolian-like appearance (attributed to Native American features, though many people in the south often called me derisive Asian-based names as a boy) but I really do not think Clint Howard has any significant features that resemble mine.